Defence of Verghast
by Brother-Sergeant Rafen
Summary: A single Guard armoured regiment is the only thing that stands before Chaos and total victory. Can its commander survive against all odds? My take on the Gaunt's Ghosts novel Necropolis, from a rather satirical point of view.
1. Chapter 1

"_I would say to the men as I said to those who have joined this command: __I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat__. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long years of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs — Victory in spite of all terror — Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival."_ –Lord Commander Pacificus Churchill, at the beginning of the Sabbat Worlds crusade

**=][=** The following transcript is the property of the Imperial Munitorum. Any tampering with it or its contents will result in Inquisitorial intercession. The Emperor protects. **=][=**

Accessing data file…

Buffering…

Buffering…

Data accessed.

Loading…

Eoshive, Verghast, Sabbat Sector, Segmentum Pacificus

3.589.768.M41

From the log of Colonel-Marshall Petkovic, 48th Visegrad Armoured

Is this damn thing on? Good. Well, here we are. Somehow we survived, praise the Emperor, even though I have no frakking clue how. One moment all's fine, the next second the hive next door gets corrupted and invades. 13 million men and women, almost the whole population of the damn city, all armed to the teeth with autoguns, flashlights, and here's the kicker: twoscore Baneblades and Shadowswords, along with their sister tanks. That alone should be enough to level half the planet, but then Vanickhive gets levelled by atomics. Seven million people, wiped out in less time than it takes for a Commissar to execute a full squad of cowards.

Apparently, Ferrozoica had a rivalry with Vanick and Vervunhives, and Vanick took the brunt of it. Vervunhive had some void shield that saved them, the bastards. Next thing we know, there's a quarter million tanks rolling down the plains and backed up by seemingly all the cultists in the frakking galaxy. Vervunhive slaps the panic button, so who gets called up? The glorified pencil pushers called the PDF and us, the heavy armour. Oh, and some first founding regiment called the Tanith or something, commissar fodder the whole lot of them. Not like those lot did much, mostly just ran around the hive looking for heretics. Now us, the Visegradites, we actually did something.

Picture 250 000 tanks. Malcadors, Machariuses, Leman Russes, hell, even Chimeras and Hellhounds. At the head, leading the charge, are 40 super-heavies. Ten Baneblades, seven Shadowswords, six Hellhammers, seven Stormlords, five Baneswords, and the worst of them all: five Stormhammers. Now about a hundred klicks to the west, on their left flank, is my command.

Four hundred and fifty-seven Russes, forty-three Machariuses, a hundred Devil Dogs, and four Baneblades. With that force, I was expected to win a war.

Well, turns out heretics don't really understand the concept of exploiting a success. So Vanickhive got flattened. The gates of Vervunhive are practically thrown wide open, and all that's standing between them and total victory is a ragtag group of Tanith orphans and the stunned PDF. So what do they do? They wait. Fifteen days of pointless milling about, yelling out heretical things and erecting shoddy temples to their various daemons. Not like I'm complaining, of course. Fifteen days is a LOT of time for an armoured regiment. For one thing, ALL of our tanks got up-armoured. Hell, not only our tanks, but our frakking maintenance Sentinels as well. Extra armour, dozer blades, camo netting, the works. Anything to give us a few extra seconds of survivability.

So where did we get all this crap, you may ask? Eoshive, where we were garrisoned, is the lucky host to a Munitorum armoury. If you think the Mechanicus hoards things, think again. There was literally KILOMETRES worth of stuff back there. For instance, in this one underground bunker, I found Soylens Viridians stacked around forty storeys high. That's around 3 square kilometres, extending 90 metres up. When you start measuring Soylens in kilometres, you know there's something wrong. Another bunker I found, it was actually pretty small. Probably could fit a thousand people in there if they sat, two thousand if they stood. But it wasn't full of people, oh no. Inside was stack after stack of pure, unadulterated GOLD. I mean there was enough to pay for a new frakking Astartes chapter! Sadly, there was a small army of clerks nearby, probably trying to figure out how much to tithe for the Nova Terra Interregnum or whatever. Oh, and a Commissar with a VERY nice bolt pistol that was uncomfortably close to my crotch. So he said he was checking the mag for any scratches. Yeah, and I'm an Ork's uncle.

Nonetheless, you get my point. A huge shitload of…stuff, and it was mine. All mine. Well within reason, anyways. For the record, I actually tried to requisition half the gold in that bunker. Backfired miserably, and got so mired up in red tape that I gave up in disgust. Managed to snag myself a decent-looking Nalwood swagger stick, though. Damned thing probably costs more than a Russ nowadays, but worth every for I had to fill out. In triplicate. With each triple copy having to be signed once again in triplicate by a member of the Ministorum, for some reason. Thank the Emperor, I found a drunken reverend who was safely separated from his flamer and got the thing.

On the bright side, I was able to pawn off most of the paperwork to some grumbling scribe-adept. Considering the amount of stuff I grabbed, he's going to be busy for quite a while. Fun fact: It's actually possible to requisition a Krieger Regiment, provided it is under half-strength. …Because that totally isn't what I did…

Okay, in my defence, those Kriegers can dig like nobody else. I told them to create fortifications stretching about twenty kilometres or so along this ridge. I leave for the day, to go supervise the up-armouring of my tanks. I come back, and there's half a frakking Kasr up there, complete with Earthshakers (I don't want to know where THOSE came from), heavy bolters, and lascannon emplacements. They found this machine that lays barbed wire out in lines of five, and started doing laps across the cliffside. Pretty sure they managed to actually empty one of the Munitorum's bunkers laying all that crap, and that's hard even for a full battle group to pull off. And that's not all: those buggers managed to find a bunch of regimental banners, so not only do they have the banner of their regiment, they have about ten other Krieger banners all lined up on top of the bunkers in order of destruction or something, with theirs at the very end.

So now I have a HUGE line of fortifications stretching across almost two dozen kilometres of wasteland, and a half-regiment of Death Korps manning it. I don't even know where the Kriegers came from, but they were there anyways and when the Orks hit the turbofan, they were VERY useful. But enough about them, this is about ME. The governor of the planet gets on the line with me, waking me up just after midnight, too. Sadly, though, when the brass calls, I answer. Not enthusiastically, nor too awake either, but that was his problem, not mine. So he goes on and says, "Colonel, I have bad news for you. The nearest Crusade reinforcements are too far away to be any help. My PDF is sadly not up to the challenge, having been neglected for far too long. The general in charge has been executed by the Commissariat, over my protests," See? Even when delivering bad news the bastard has to be uptight and indignant. That's why I was so reluctant to speak to the guy, but what can you do? So he continues along the same line, going on like "I am confident the Tanith regiment stationed in Vervunhive will be much help to you, colonel, but they are light infantry unsuited for destroying armour. That's where you come in. I recognize that your force pales in comparison to the traitors, but I hope that your skills in command far outweigh theirs. Best of luck, colonel." So basically, he says I'm screwed and if I mess up but survive, his hands are clean and I'm getting shot. Beautiful.

Well then, given such _beautiful_ incentive to win or die trying, I give word to the troops to step up their game. Managed to 'requisition' (okay, I stole them. Totally worth it, though.) a super-heavy tank company, which is where I got the Baneblades from. Found a bunch of battle cannon turrets (legitimately, this time), had them added to my strongpoint. So now my defence line is starting to look pretty damn nice, but there's one problem: this line isn't going to stop anything. Yeah, it's going to shoot up quite a few tanks and cultists, but it's just going to be a distraction. A very dangerous distraction, but a distraction nevertheless. If I even want half a chance at stopping these bastards, I need something more.

And that, dear friends/angry Inquisitor reading this, is where my artillery comes in. By now it was rather well-known that Ferrozoica possessed thermonuclear warheads. Vanickhive did get flattened by them, after all. What wasn't as well-known, however, was that Eos had some too. Oh, not that many, but enough to put a rather large dent in an invading army. The majority of them were stored somewhere in a bunker that even I didn't have the clearance to enter, but there were a few Deathstrike launchers lying around. Now for the ordinary Imperial citizen: a Deathstrike Missile Launcher is rather simple to explain. Picture a standard Imperial Chimera transport. Now rip off all its weapons and the turret (not too violently, the techpriests might get annoyed). In their place, grab the biggest missile you can find and bolt it onto the roof. Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a Deathstrike Missile Launcher, the singly most destructive piece of artillery in the Imperial Guard's arsenal. One of these alone is enough to destroy a Guard regiment. I 'requisitioned' three.

So with all this gear, I was thinking: yeah, maybe I can win this. Sure, I'm outnumbered almost a hundred to one, not to mention those crazed cultists, but given my 'skills' as a commander I stand a pretty decent chance. Of course, during war, things never go as planned. As the old saying goes: "_A battle plan never survives contact with the hated foe"_ (–Saint Murphius, _The Militaria Laws_) A horde of bulk freighters shows up out of nowhere, and my men and I start cheering. Those are our reinforcements, right? They're here to save our arses and destroy the Zoicans right? Yeah. Nope. The bloody idiots land inside of Vervunhive and proceed to expeditiously do nothing but argue. A small detachment from the standard Zoican military pulls up to the walls of Vervun and starts bombarding it, and the frakking governor of the hive waits almost five hours before turning on the shields. Then some brave Commissar tries to make an armoured sortie, and gets half the tanks in the hive shot up in the process. Only ten tanks make it back in one piece, and they crush a bunch of refugees in the process. The gates shut, and the Zoicans continue their bombardment.

Honestly, how hard can it be to get an easy victory, for once?


	2. Chapter 2

Corruption detected...

Please wait…

Purging in the Emperor's name…

Corruption expunged.

Please wait…

Buffering…

Loading…

Loading…

Loaded.

Eoshive, Verghast, Sabbat Worlds Sector, Segmentum Pacificus

3.589.768.M41

From the log of Colonel-Marshall Petkovic, 48th Visegrad Armoured Regiment

You ever feel like life is out to get you? Like there's this huge conspiracy against you, and everyone is a part of it. I know I'm sounding like some paranoid Inquisitor, but bear with me. Picture this: You're just happily minding your own business, then life skips along and gives you a glass of fine Amasec. So you take it, thanking life and smiling. It seems like your day just got so much better. Then the traitorous little bastard blows your kneecaps off and sets the glass on fire before pouring it all over you. And, while you're writhing on the ground in burning agony, life grabs a glass of water and drinks it. Then pours some promethium all over you and…you get it.

So yeah, that's basically how I felt (and still feel) when I hear over the Chaos vox-net something involving 'Heritor Asphodel'. I'm ashamed to admit, it took a second for me to process that. Once I got my brain wrapped around it…I screamed for about half an hour. Ok, for those who somehow don't know about him, here's a quick bio: He was born, he turned to Chaos, he royally frakked up like a hundred Guard regiments, he ran away to Verghast, he frakked up Ferrozoica. Too quick? Here's the long version. Nobody knows who he was before he joined the Ruinous Powers, though it's been thought he was a member of the AdMech. He became one of the Magisters, the lieutenants of the Archon of the Sabbat Worlds and the reason for this cluster-frak known as the Crusade. Anyways, we first encountered his sick creations on Ashek II, in 756.

This guy created a whole bunch of Daemon engines, some unholy fusion of Chaos and machine. Over fifty Imperial Guard regiments were annihilated by them before the bright sparks in charge of the invasion called Crusade Command and asked for some heavier weapons to crush the machines. The Warmaster Slaydo sent us in, alongside the 2nd Narmenian and the Mershan 45th heavy regiments. I saw firsthand the sheer carnage the Heritor could unleash upon a world, given enough time. There were so many bodies and wrecked tanks littering the planet that you could barely see the ground in some places. It's been said the rivers upon the world still run red with blood, and the streets are still clogged with bodies. I reckon we lost over half the regiment in combat there, not to mention my first frakking tank. We managed to bail just in time though, 'just in time' in that case meaning as soon as we saw a Daemon Engine turn in our vaguely general direction. The Russ evaporated a second after I scrambled out, along with one of the sponson gunners (he was an arse anyways, don't miss him) and the infantry platoon next to us.

Of course, a Commissar noticed us do that, so I was 'volunteered' to lead a charge against some Engine. Turns out that was the same Commissar who was holding a bolt pistol next to my groin in the gold bunker, so go figure. Bastard had it in for me, that's for certain. So here I am, forcibly dismounted by means of a dozen lascannons, and in nominal command of a scratch company of Praetorians, Kriegers, Elysians, Visegradites, and the inevitable Cadians. We barely have a single heavy weapon between the six hundred or so of us, and my regiment's tanks have been spread out across the continent trying to wipe out all those Daemons.

Seeing those odds, I try to convince the Commissar that charging perhaps wasn't the brightest idea. He responds by firing his laspistol right next to my head before flourishing his chainsword menacingly. I get the hint, and heft my power sword up before yelling my best approximation of a Visegradite war cry. My new troops respond with mostly reluctant enthusiasm, the Kriegers silently surging forwards before I even start moving. They get all but annihilated, a Forgefiend mowing them down with three gatling autocannons. The Praetorians are next, marching towards it in parade-ground order while singing a song about a Tipperary. They barely finish the first verse before being demolished by a Demolisher cannon. Then come the Cadians, slinging krak grenades and making a general ruckus. They somehow disable a Brass Scorpion, blowing its limbs apart and finishing it off with sporadic lasfire. Then they in turn get their limbs blown off by that same Forgefiend, the damned thing cackling all the while. The Visegradites and Elysians are somewhat more hesitant, but even they move up after one of their number gets shot by the Commissar.

I'm sadly at the head of this motley bunch, halfheartedly waving my blade and weaving for all I'm worth. I manage to escape any injury from the flying bolts and shells, although a quarter of my force isn't so lucky. Some scrub turns into a fountain of red right next to me, his face blown off by an exploding mortar shell. In the chaos, I notice the Commissar slowly slinking away, but I'm too caught up in the charge now to do anything about it. After what seems like eternity, we get within grenade range of the Forgefiend, and start chucking kraks at it. Absolutely nothing happens, off course, until I run up with a 'requisitioned' melta bomb. Let's just say that some drunken Kasrkin is probably dead because he couldn't kill a tank in time, but that's not my problem. I plant the thing, and jump clear before it detonates. The Daemon Engine's head is melted away, along with its neck and upper torso. The troops cheer, and I even join in. We're celebrating, and for good cause. Unfortunately, we're too busy cheering to notice a VERY angry Heldrake swooping in from the skies.

One second we're cheering our cardboard box-clad arses off, next thing we know we're a dozen men short by means of several bursts of warp-flame, and a giant metal daemon-drake is vector striking us left and right. I'm about to order an 'orderly' withdrawal, and the Commissariat can go to the warp (I don't really mean that, please don't shoot me Mr. Commissar sir), when a huge shaft (get your helmet out of the gutter, trooper) of energy slams into the Heldrake. And another. And another. The problem was, it regenerated almost as quickly as the lascannon was firing. The flying bastard ate almost FORTY blasts of coherent light before finally giving up and dying like a good boy. Problem was, it was at the apex of yet another climb just as it was killed.

You see, not only does life hate me, but physics is also doing its damndest to kill Col. Petkovic. The drake crushes a further dozen of my men and misses me by millimetres, kicking up a cloud of dust the size of a titan. Oh, and the shattered bodies of far too many good guardsmen. They didn't die in vain, though. Thanks to them, and a rather self-preserving Commissar with an Icarus Lascannon mount, I managed to survive Ashek II. With my command, I might add. Even got the Pacificus Honorifica tacked onto that, along with the Winged Skull and the Triple Skull, the latter due to having 'led' the scratch company… Which suffered 70% casualties, more than enough to qualify for the medal. Not exactly something to be proud of when you're commanding the unit, but a medal's a medal.

So the regiment (and me, especially me) get a nice, long, well-deserved rest on a paradise world, served by busty Valhallan girls and spending our days getting 'relieved', in more ways than one. Ah, who am I kidding. We get half a month to get back up to strength before being shipped off to fight the Archon on his throne world of Balhaut. Apparently, there were a few hundred Daemon Engines tearing our troops a new one, and we got the call. Three guesses as to who sent the engines. Yeah, that's right. Heritor-frakking-Arsephodel.

So here we go, about two hundred or so tanks and a thousand crewmen, all weary from Ashek and near breaking point. All of us are shuffling onto the bulk freighter, a giant ugly flying brick of metal with no windows and minimal life support. Takes us almost a month to get to Balhaut, but since we're already safely on our ways you'd think we'd be safe, right? Wrong.

Okay, so what I'm about to say next is supposedly contravening over a dozen Imperial and Inquisitorial laws, not to mention rather restricted knowledge. But if you're reading this, you should be aware of Chaos already, so not my problem. Anyways, just before we left Ashek II, some tendril of the Immaterium managed to get aboard the ship, nestling inside the freighter's warp core. This tendril decided to materialize as a rather large Daemon, and massacred the entire crew inside the core chamber. Of course, us guardsmen generally didn't know about this. All we knew is that interesting noises have been coming from around mid-ship, not that we were allowed to go there normally anyways.

First I get word of it is a general summons for all the senior staff aboard the ship to meet at the bridge. That consisted of yours truly, a Krieger Colonel, a Tallarn Captain, a Cadian Knight Commander, a Nyssian Marshall, and that same Emperor-damned Commissar from Ashek II. Half of us are commanders of armoured regiments, and so have next to zero experience with fighting on a ship. Nonetheless, the ship's frakking captain notifies us of the 'unfortunate incident', and says he believes that us fighting men of the Imperium are more than capable of dealing with a 'single measly daemon'.

Or, in other words, good luck, you're all gonna die. Well, it was nice to know he was confident of our dubious abilities. We were told not to spread information about this threat to the men, in case it damages morale. So that scratched out the possibility of getting backup. We were allowed to bring a small group of men to aid us, but only to a maximum of five. So twenty-five not-so-highly-trained soldiers, funnelled into a tiny room, were expected to banish a Daemon for a thousand years or so. Not the worst odds I've seen, but not exactly the best, either.

Then, with the brief briefing complete (seriously, he just told us to kill the thing or our men get thrown out the nearest airlock), we set off towards the core chamber. I'd taken the caution of getting my 2IC and the four Krieg grenadiers that had attached themselves to my command after the debacle on Ashek to come with me, arming myself with a power sword and a hotshot laspistol. In the interests of my well-being, I had bribed a techpriest to attach a small refractor field to my Honorifica, giving myself a miniscule chance of surviving the encounter. The grenadiers armed themselves with hotshots, one of them grabbing a plasma gun on the way out. My 2IC, Captain Zhukov, was equipped with a crackling powerfist and a hand flamer, along with some scrounged carapace armour. The Tallarn guy had a rather fancy power sword, carrying a very nice plasma pistol as a sidearm. Apparently he was some Tallarn war hero, regarded as a tactical genius in small-unit tactics. Personally, I call groxshit, but that's my opinion.

When we reached the airlock to the warp core, the reaction of the Kriegers was priceless. They had grabbed their trademark respirators, over 20 of them, and started forcibly distributing them to all of us. Look, how were we supposed to know that the warp core was in vacuum? I'm a tanker, and tankers don't work well with ships. Well, that and hand-to-hand combat with a Daemon Engine. And Daemons. And cultists. Come to think of it, tankers don't work well with much else other than tanks. Not like that was deterring the Kriegers. My own bodyguards were vigorously shoving a mask at me and Zhukov, with him taking it rather more reluctantly than me.

It's an extra piece of metal that might stop a killing blow but would prove lethal if it did so it's pretty much useless anyways and it might be a better idea not to get hit but who am I kidding we're screwed anyways oh by the throne no. What's not to love? So with everyone well-equipped with respirators, I voxed the ship's arsehole/captain to open the door, which the slimy bastard did with enthusiastic glee. The blast doors slide open to reveal a vast hexagonal chamber, a massive plasma generator taking up each corner and a large array of tubes occupying the centre. The sheer immensity of the place is enough to awe anyone, although our attentions were focused more on the Bloodthirster gorging itself on the remnants of the core crew.

It was a great ugly beast, easily two metres high and armed with a two-handed blade as long as it was tall. It was possessed of scarlet skin, although where the blood ended and the scales started was impossible to figure out. It had these massive horns on top of its head, and a mouth full of rather large, sharp teeth. I was hoping it wouldn't notice us, and we could let off a killing volley, but luck evidently wasn't smiling on us that day.

"FEEL FEAR MORTALS, FOR THE HERALD OF KHORNE SHALL DESCEND UPON YOU! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! LET THE GALAXY BU—ow! What the fuck?!"

Turns out the Commissar's single bodyguard had packed a meltagun, and managed to line up a perfect shot while the daemon was busy ranting. The thing's face was priceless, but not really that pleased. And that was when I nearly shat my pants. I mean, the bastard just took a melta blast head-on, and took it like a parchment-cut!

And that, my friends/increasingly angry Commissar about to have me shot, is when you know you're screwed.

Further data corrupted. Nortonius Anti-Daemonware Engine M41 initializing. Please wait.

**Well, hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Ave Imperator, until next time.**

**-Rafen**


End file.
